Obama, Clinton pressed on 2016 in joint interview

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were again pressed to describe their complicated and still mysterious relationship — but for the first time, they explored it together.

Billed as an assessment of the past four years of foreign policy timed to Clinton’s coming departure from the administration, the “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday evening became instead a reexamination of the 2008 rivals’ past and future.

Even Clinton acknowledged that the interview, which was the first that the president had asked a member of his administration to do with him, was “improbable.”

Vice President Joe Biden has been the focus of renewed speculation about his 2016 presidential ambitions in recent days, but Clinton was the one who sat by the president’s side for his first post-inauguration interview. Biden’s potential candidacy was only touched on — as was the uncomfortable position Obama could find himself in if his vice president and secretary of state become political opponents.

There was some assessment of American involvement overseas during Obama’s first term, but correspondent Steve Kroft spent most of his 30 minutes at the White House on Friday exploring the dynamic between the president and the woman who had fought him for the job. There was also a hint of what might lie ahead.

Kroft asked if there was an expiration date on Obama’s support of Clinton, with his secretary of state and vice president both potentially eyeing a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.

Obama and Clinton both shrugged off the political question with jokes.

“You guys in the press are incorrigible,” Obama said, laughing. “I was literally inaugurated four days ago. And you’re talking about elections four years from now.”

Clinton added that as secretary of state she is “forbidden from even hearing these questions.” Clinton smiled and laughed during congressional hearings on Wednesday at which many Democrats questioning her on Benghazi added in endorsements of a 2016 run.

More seriously, though, she said, neither she nor Obama can predict “what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next year. What we’ve tried to do over the last four years is get up every day, have a clear-eyed view of what’s going on in the world.”

The B-word — Biden — didn’t make it into the exchange.

Keeping his answers short, Obama called Clinton “a strong friend,” and described their “ great collaboration over the last four years. I’m going to miss her.”

Clinton followed up with more details — the two are “warm, close,” with many shared experiences, including time in the White House. Any tensions are “ancient history because of … the kind of people we all are, but also we’re professionals,” she later added.